Congratulations, pollinator advocates! Last week, First Lady Michelle Obama added a “first-ever pollinator garden,” including two types of milkweed and dozens of flowering nectar plants, to the White House Kitchen Garden.

First Lady Michelle Obama busy at the White House Kitchen Garden where she recently added pollinator plants, including two species of milkweed. Photo via Obama Foodorama Blog

On April 2, during its spring installation, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue added Swamp milkweed, Asclepias incarnata and Butterfly weed, Asclepias tuberosa to the 1500-square-foot garden. The milkweed species will serve as Monarch host plant as well as a favored nectar source to bees and other butterfly species.

Coming soon to the first ever pollinator garden at the White House: Asclepias incarnata, Swamp Milkweed. Photo by Monika Maeckle

In her remarks to the 25 school children assisting in the planting, Mrs. Obama explained she was adding flowering inedible plants to the vegetable garden because she wants to “help bees and butterflies.” Until now, herbs and vegetables have occupied all 34 of the garden’s beds since it was first planted in 2009.

“A pollinator garden helps to encourage the production of bees and Monarch butterflies. They pollinate the plants, they help the plants grow,” said the First Lady. “They’re dying because of disease–we don’t even know why some beehives are just totally disappearing.”

The loss of the insects “could be a problem for the planet because if you don’t have insects and great pollinators to pollinate the plants, it could affect our food source, it could affect our ability to continue to grow things,” Mrs. Obama explained.

“So this garden is going to help to contribute to improving that problem,” she said. “Pretty cool, huh?”

VERY cool.

The addition of milkweed to this symbolic presidential garden must be viewed as a small victory for pollinator advocacy.

Now here we are only seven weeks later–enough time for a Monarch butterfly egg to move through its five instars, form a chrysalis and hatch into a butterfly–and milkweed has been added to the White House garden.

Coincidence? We think not.

We did it! First Lady Michelle Obama added milkweed to the White House kitchen garden, creating the first-ever pollinator garden at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue last week.

What happened in between is a testament to what is possible when individuals and citizen scientists take action. As written here previously, the NAFTA gathering galvanized awareness of pollinator decline.